MILLE, Thomas

Originally insignificant Devon gentry, the Milles owed their rise in fortune to Thomas’s mother Juliana Rous, whose inheritance included the manors of Harescombe and Duntisbourne Rouse in Gloucestershire, those of Allensmore, Avenbury and Tregate in Herefordshire and various rents and rights of lordship at Newbury in Berkshire. Possibly a lawyer, Mille’s father and namesake enjoyed an active career in local government until shortly before his death late in Henry V’s reign. When he died the heir to Juliana’s estates was William Herle, presumably her son by her previous marriage, upon whom she entailed Harescombe and Duntisbourne Rouse in 1427. In the event, Mille succeeded to these manors and to Juliana’s other holdings not long afterwards, indicating that William must have died prematurely while still childless.10 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 738-9; iv. 26. Presumably William was already dead by the autumn of 1430 when Allensmore was settled on Mille and his issue, by means of a conveyance in which Sir John Pauncefoot† and his wife Alice, Juliana’s daughter by Sir Andrew Herle, were also involved.11 CP25(1)/83/55/33.

In spite of acquiring lands at Bisley in Gloucestershire just over a decade later,12 VCH Glos. xi. 18. Mille appears not to have augmented his inheritance to any notable extent. There is no evidence that he gained any significant holdings through his wife Margery, although it was in her right that the couple claimed an interest in property at Coughton in Warwickshire, part of her late mother’s inheritance. During the late 1440s and early 1450s, they quarrelled with her brother John Tracy over these properties, after he had agreed to surrender them to his aunt Eleanor Throckmorton and her son Thomas* in return for other holdings in Worcestershire. The Milles challenged the proposed exchange, prompting Tracy to take action against them in the Chancery.13 C1/22/139. In the end he must have got his way, for the Throckmortons subsequently took possession of the lands in question.14 VCH Warws. iii. 81.

In all likelihood, Mille received a legal education as a young man. He was certainly well versed in the law, for he owned Year Books of Henry VI’s reign,15 Harl. 5159 (with explicits ‘quod T. Mulle’ and ‘quod Mulle T’). He also owned a version of Ranulph Higden’s ‘Polychronicon’: Huntington Lib. San Marino, California, Hastings mss, HAM 25861. and served as a justice itinerant in south Wales for the Stafford family. As for his career in local government, he spent the greater part of it in Gloucestershire although he was twice sheriff of Herefordshire. His first term as such overlapped with his first Parliament, for he became sheriff just weeks after taking up his seat in the Commons of 1435. It is impossible to tell whether his two most important patrons, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford and duke of Buckingham, and John Talbot, 1st earl of Shrewsbury, helped him to gain election to any of his three Parliaments. The effects or extent of Stafford’s political patronage are extremely difficult to measure,16 Rawcliffe, 81. while Talbot spent most of his career outside England, meaning that he was not usually an immediate presence in domestic politics.

Both the Staffords and Talbots possessed interests in the Milles’ part of Gloucestershire, for the Stafford manor of Haresfield lay just to the west of Harescombe and the Talbot lordship of Painswick a little to the south-east. Mille held several offices under the duke of Buckingham, who by the early 1440s was paying him a retainer of ten marks p.a.,17 Ibid. 193, 223, 234. and it is possible that he named Humphrey, one of his younger sons, after his patron. Mille inherited a connexion with the Talbots from his father, who had acted as a feoffee for the earl of Shrewsbury’s late elder brother, Gilbert Talbot, 5th Lord Talbot.18 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 739. He himself held office in the lordship of Painswick – in what capacity is unknown – and he was one of the earl’s key men in the area. Furthermore, Mille’s eldest son William was a receiver for Shrewsbury, whose son and successor confirmed father and son in their offices.19 A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 236, 238, 244. Given their ties with the Talbots, it was perhaps inevitable that both Milles were drawn into the long-running and bitter Talbot-Berkeley feud over the lordship of Berkeley. The earl of Shrewsbury vigorously pursued the claim to the lordship of his second wife, a daughter of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and in 1451 James, Lord Berkeley’s own wife warned him to beware ‘Thomas Mull’.20 J. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys ed. Maclean, ii. 63. In September that year, shortly after John, Viscount Lisle, Shrewsbury’s son by his second marriage, seized Berkeley castle and imprisoned Lord Berkeley and his sons, Mille witnessed a deed by which the Berkeleys ceded lands at Slimbridge to the Talbots. A few weeks later, Mille was one of the witnesses to another agreement between the two sides, again very much in the Talbots’ favour.21 Ibid. ii. 65; A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 133; KB27/763, rot. 42. Ironically, following the earl of Shrewsbury’s death in 1453, his son the 2nd earl, of whom Mille and his son became firm supporters, allied himself against his stepmother, the dowager countess of Shrewsbury. Whether the Berkeleys viewed the MP in a more favourable light thereafter is debatable, for it would appear that there were certain ‘matters’ pending between them and Mille when the latter died seven years later.22 Smyth, ii. 75-76.

If easily his most important patrons, the Staffords and Talbots were not the only magnates with whom Mille was associated, for he acted as a witness and feoffee for John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick,23 CCR, 1447-54, p. 445; Add. Chs. 73201, 73444. and as a feoffee for (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, Lord Stanley.24 CCR, 1454-61, p. 479. It was perhaps through the Pauncefoots that he owed his connexion with Powick, whose niece, Margaret Swynford, married Sir John Pauncefoot’s son Thomas*. The Pauncefoots were probably Mille’s closest connexions among the gentry of south-west England, although he was also a feoffee for John Langley II* (his fellow MP in the Parliament of 1435) and John Vampage*.25 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 159-60; CP25(1)/79/89/59. In the autumn of 1444, Mille helped Sir John Pauncefoot to make a family settlement of Crickhowell, the Pauncefoot castle and lordship in Brecon. As it stood, the resulting entail should have caused little concern to Richard, duke of York, the feudal lord of Crickhowell, but shortly afterwards Mille and his co-feoffees put their names to a deed which provided for the lordship to pass immediately to the King, in case of a failure of Pauncefoot heirs. York reacted furiously. Accusing Sir John of conspiring to disinherit him, he petitioned Parliament in about 1446 to have this latter arrangement overturned, although apparently without pursuing matters to a formal conclusion.26 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 27; SC8/85/4247; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 13.

In the same period, Mille took action to safeguard an agreement that one of his maternal ancestors, Sir John Rous, had made with the abbey of Dore in Herefordshire many years earlier. Under the agreement, the abbey had undertaken to provide in perpetuity two chaplains and a secular priest to sing for the souls of Rous’s ancestors and successors. Presumably, Mille had become concerned that it was failing to observe its obligations, for the monks now conceded that Mille and his heirs should have the right to take a rent of five marks p.a. from the abbey’s estates in case it failed to comply with the agreement.27 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 443-4.

In the following decade, the growing divisions between the duke of York and the court put paid to a great council to which Mille received a summons – as one of the representatives for Gloucestershire – in the spring of 1455.28 PPC, vi. 341; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 160-1. Several months after the first battle of St. Albans in May that year, he took the precaution of obtaining a royal pardon,29 C67/41, m. 21 (1 Nov. 1455). perhaps because he and his family were strongly identified with the Lancastrian cause. Evidence for their political loyalties is clear cut: his younger son Hugh gained election as a burgess for New Shoreham to the notorious Coventry Parliament of 1459, he himself served on an anti-Yorkist commission of array at the end of the same year and his eldest son William took up arms for Henry VI.

The latter years of Henry VI’s reign also saw Mille involved in much more mundane affairs. In the spring of 1456 he made a settlement in favour of his younger sons and was chosen to arbitrate in a dispute between the burgesses of Gloucester and Llanthony priory. In June the following year, he and his son Hugh presided over sessions of the peace at Gloucester, in their capacities as j.p.s. for Gloucestershire. Among those indicted on that occasion was Robert Stanshawe, son and heir of Robert Stanshawe*, for having forcibly disseised John Butler* of lands at Tresham and Kilcote.30 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 453-4; Cal. Regs. Llanthony Priory (Bristol and Glos. Rec. Soc. xv), 26; KB27/788, rex rot. 19d.

Still a j.p. at the end of his life, Mille died in 1460, probably soon after drawing up a brief will on 12 Mar. that year. In the will, which does not survive in probate form, he asked to be buried in the parish church at Harescombe, provided for a priest to sing masses there for him during the year following his death, left a seal bearing his arms to his son and heir William and set aside 30s. for a tombstone to cover his grave. The stone was to bear the names of himself and his wife, who perhaps had already died. Finally, he appointed the obscure John Clybs and John Arthur, perhaps two of his household servants or estate officers, as his executors. At some stage in the 1470s, Thomas Pauncefoot took action against Arthur in the Chancery over a bond, a security for a sum of £12 that Pauncefoot had borrowed from Mille and claimed to have repaid in full. The purpose of Pauncefoot’s bill was to stay the proceedings of a lawsuit that Arthur had begun against him on the strength of the bond, so that the matter could be referred to the chancellor.31 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. li. 214-15; C1/64/889.

Escheator of Gloucestershire at his father’s death, William Mille would receive a knighthood, perhaps for his services to Henry VI on the battlefield. A member of the Lancastrian army that fought at Towton, he died four days later on 2 Apr. 1461, perhaps from wounds suffered in that bloody encounter. Edward IV’s first Parliament posthumously attainted Sir William and the Crown seized his estates. Among the lands confiscated from Sir William Mille in Devon were manors at Barton Mill and King’s Nympton but it is not clear whether these had come to him from the MP or, indeed, whether the latter had previously inherited them from his own father and namesake.32 PROME, xiii. 42-53. Both The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 739, and HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 595, mistakenly state that the MP was likewise attainted in the Parl. of 1461 but his name does not feature anywhere in the Act of Attainder passed by that assembly The manors of Harescombe, Duntisbourne Rouse and Tregate, along with other properties in Gloucestershire, Berkshire, Devon, Monmouthshire and Middlesex, were granted to Thomas Herbert†.33 PROME, xiii. 280, 288; C140/8/22. Excluded from Herbert’s grant were the jointure estates of Sir William’s widow Frances, the manors of Avenbury and Allensmore in Herefordshire and lands at Tregate in the same county, and in December 1461 she obtained letters patent, confirmed in the following February, to safeguard her possession of them.34 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 72, 85. By August 1464 she had found a new husband in (Sir) Walter Skulle*. Skulle must have petitioned the Crown about these estates, which featured in letters patent the couple received from Edward IV that month. The grant awarded them to the Skulles and their issue, to whom were also assigned estates in Worcestershire forfeited by John Lenche in 1461 as well as a rent of four marks p.a. from Dore abbey. Furthermore, it provided for Frances’s son and two daughters by Sir William Mille to succeed to all these holdings if she bore Skulle no children, but even this contingent interest in favour of the offspring of her previous marriage was removed when the grant was renewed in October 1468.35 CPR, 1461-7, p. 388; 1467-77, p. 110. In June 1474, following the death of Thomas Herbert’s childless son and successor, Edward IV gave Harescombe and Duntisbourne Rouse to Sir Richard Beauchamp†,36 CPR, 1467-77, p. 448. but within weeks of the grant Sir William Mille’s youngest brother Reynold submitted a petition to the Crown seeking to have it overturned. According to him, the two manors should not have forfeited to the Crown because they had never belonged to Sir William in the first place. The petition cited a charter of April 1456, by which his father had settled the manors and other lands in Gloucestershire on himself and his wife Margery for their lives, with successive remainders to their younger sons Thomas, Humphrey and the said Reynold. Reynold explained that the childless Humphrey had predeceased both the MP and Margery and that Thomas, who subsequently had succeeded to these estates, had likewise died without issue, meaning that they should have passed to him. It is not known why Reynold did not make his complaint at a much earlier date or how the authorities could have mistakenly seized properties not belonging to Sir William Mille; unless the knight had enjoyed actual physical possession of them, whether with or without his younger brother’s consent. The Crown responded to the petition by appointing a commission of inquiry, although its findings have not survived. Nevertheless, Reynold’s claims were upheld by a later inquisition of December 1482 and Duntisbourne Rouse and other Mille properties in Gloucestershire subsequently passed to his son and heir Edmund.37 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 453-4; C140/8/22; VCH Glos. xi. 18; C142/29/65. Frances Skulle died in the summer of 1483. Again a widow by that date, she was survived by Thomas and Anne, two of her children by Sir William Mille. It was this younger Thomas Mille who successfully petitioned the Parliament of 1485 for the reversal of Sir William’s attainder.38 PCC 7 Logge (PROB 11/7, ff. 54v-55); PROME, xv. 173-4.